New Visual Style

The new minibar at the top of the screen allows you to quickly navigate between courses and access your personal settings anywhere.

Tool Menus on the Left Are Now Across the Top

Your Icons are Hiding in this Drop-Down Arrow

Contextual actions are no longer accessed through icons that appear next to the item you are modifying. Click the drop-down arrow next to the item to see these actions.

View as a Student from Anywhere within a Course

Student View is built into the personal settings section of the new minibar, which can be accessed from anywhere within in a Course.

Content

Table of Contents

The Content now has a Table of Contents menu on the left that displays all your modules.

Create Modules with Ease

Just click in the “Add a Module” textbox, write your module name, and hit Enter.

Add Descriptions and Due Dates

You can add descriptions and due dates to any item in your content or to entire modules. Students will see due dates not only in Content, but also on the Course Home page in the calendar widget. Click the module or topic after you have created it to access these settings.

Drag and Drop in Content

Dragging to drop targets is a quick way of reorganizing modules and topics. If you drag a module or topic above or below other modules and topics, a gray line appears to indicate you can drop the module or topic there. If you drag a module or topic over another module, the module appears orange to indicate you can drop it there.

In BeachBoard Document Viewer

If you upload Word documents or PowerPoint files, students will be able to view them directly in BeachBoard. (They’ll still be able to download them too.)

Completion Tracking

If enabled, automatic completion checks an item off when a student views it or completes an associated assessment. Students will also see a progress bar of how many modules/topics have been completed. Edit your topic’s properties to find completion tracking settings.

Create or Add Other Course Tools in Content

You can now add existing or create activities to Content (like Discussions, Dropbox folders, and Quizzes). Date restrictions and descriptions for those activities will sync in Content. When you change a date restriction or description in Content, it will change the activity, and vice versa.

Improved Handling of External Links and Unsupported File Types

External links now automatically open in a new tab or window. This allows instructors to track whether the link was visited, and maintains consistent course navigation for the student.

Dropbox

Grade Non-Submissions

Instructors can now evaluate and provide feedback to users with no dropbox folder submissions within the dropbox. Previously, feedback and grades for students who did not submit an assignment to the dropbox could only be posted in the gradebook area.

Enter Feedback, Publish Later

You no longer have to make your feedback visible to students as soon as you enter it. You can enter feedback for the whole class, save feedback as draft, and publish it all at once.

Batch upload papers with feedback

You’ve always been able to download all student papers from a Dropbox Folder at once as a zip file. Now, once you’re done making comments, you can upload them all back at once too. BeachBoard will automatically add the files as feedback to the correct student.

Restore Deleted Dropbox Folders

If you accidentally delete a discussion, you can now restore it through dropbox event log with student data intact.

Discussions

New Discussion Format

Click on a topic in a Forum to see all of the Threads in that Topic. Click the title of the individual thread to view and reply to all of the posts in that thread.

Post-First Discussions

Instructors can now apply posting restrictions such as “User must start a thread before they can read and reply to other threads” at the forum or topic level. This option is available in the Properties tab while editing an existing forum/topic or creating a new forum/topic. *Note: Selecting this option at the Forum level will affect all topics located under that forum.

Restore Deleted Forums/Topics

Quizzes

Add/Edit Questions

The Quiz tool layout has changed. In the previous version, Add/Edit Questions was located on a separate tab. Quiz Questions are now located on the first tab, the Properties Tab.

New Assessment Tab

The Grade Item, Rubrics, and Attempts have all been combined into a new tab titled “Assessment”.

Ability to Limit Duration for Quiz Submission Views

Previously, quiz submission views (which can include a student's score and optional question and answer info) had a starting availability date and time that ended at a defined date and time. As a result, students submitting quizzes at different times would have unequal access duration to a quiz's submission view. Now, however, instructors can set a length of time (in minutes) the view is available, and the starting availability now begins at the time of a student's quiz submission.